Life In A Day

Groupon Turns Into Nimble

Groupon wasn't exactly the same, but now it's becoming Nimble.

Oie. If only.

Many of my friends who know about my former startup Nimble and are aware of the massive growth of Groupon give me a conciliatory pat on the back when they see me.

Nimble, that I founded in 2004 allowed any local business to sell it's inventory at a discount in real time. And it worked.

(Of course we were tiny compared to Groupon and I made many typical startup mistakes. Mainly, that I didn't have the right team in place.)

Now, Groupon is actually starting to copy Nimble: CNN Article

...a new mobile application that the company hopes will change when and how society chooses to eat, shop and play.

The application, known as Groupon Now, is remarkably and elegantly simple, yet it's a radical departure from Groupon's current deal-a-day business model. When a user opens up the smartphone app, he or she will be presented with just two buttons: "I'm hungry" and "I'm bored."

Clicking either button will open up a list of time-specific daily deals, based on his or her location.

The familiar $10 coupons for $20 worth of food are still there, but they're not one-time offers. Instead, businesses can choose when they want these deals to be available.

Say a restaurant is incredibly busy on Saturdays but could use more business on Wednesdays. With Groupon Now, that business can fill its seats during slow business days using time-specific deals.

That's the beauty of Groupon Now: local businesses have never really had a simple way to manage their perishable inventory, especially labor and food. Why waste those resources during slow periods when you can bring savings-savvy consumers through the doors with a highly targeted Groupon deal?

"For merchants, the daily deal is like teeth whitening, and Groupon Now is like brushing your teeth. It can be an everyday thing to keep your business going," Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason told Bloomberg Businessweek in an extensive interview on the new product.

The daily deals company has been on a tear recently -- in fact it is the fastest growing company in history -- but it faces stiff competition from companies with increasing muscle.

Oh, this kills me.

If only...

Read this post on: Medical Spas & Groupon

Maddy

My little girl.

Strategic Marketing & Sales Communications

Good sales communications can make a brilliant statement about your business.

The Package that Calistoga Ranch is using is a phenomenal example of sales materials that set the stage for immediate followup and move the sales process down the field.

I was impressed when I opened this communications. Not only is the Calistoga Ranch Package beautifully executed sales message, it also delivers just the message that a high end real estate community want's to deliver. A great execution for sales acceleration.

Headshot Photographer NYC

My good friend Chia Messina is a terrific headshot photographer in NYC.

Chia's been shooting actors headshot and has expanded into advertising and lifestyle photography. I had to laugh when Chia told me recently she'd taken the headshot of the actress Gennifer Goodwin who plays the youngest wife 'Margine' in the HBO series Big Love.

About two months I had a conversation with Chia around social media, blogging and the like. Chia alredy had a site, Twitter account and a Twitpic feed. Unfortunately her site was in Flash wich posed some nasty problems around adding or changing content and wasn't filling her SEO needs at all. I finally talked her into letting me put together a headshot blog that could reallys showcase her photography and let actors who might be potential clients to read a few posts and build up a comfort level before picking up the phone and making a call.

On the plus side she's a photographer. That give her ready access to the kind of images that the rest of us can only dream about and have to buy from iStock.

Email Never Looked Like This

Beautiful Sales & Marketing Communications.

I've been building some training Packages for Sendside's sales automation clients and I have to say, they're some really beautiful communications. Don't you wish your sales and marketing emails looked like this?

Once you get the hang of how the peices fit together and get your noggin around the fact that you can actually send any content using one of the different tab tipes (Text Editor Tabs for HTML that's built in the editor, Web Page Tabs for embedding any URL or web page, and File Tabs for showing document inside a tab) you can do some incredible things that provide real business value.

Not only do they look great, but you can see when they're opened and what content's being read. If you're using a CRM you can track all of that information all the way through to sales. It's no wonder that we have clients whose close rates have jumped by as much as 500% within  three months of implementing Sendside into their sales process. Yowza!

For any sales automation and acceleration clients of Sendside that's using Packages, you'll be recieving the Package above shortly.

Photography of people

Here's a video I produced for my friend Chia. She's a NYC photographer.

Big Hug Marketing

You have to love this kind of feel-good stuff.

jetBlue Just Blew It

jetBlue just tripped over a dollar to pick up a dime.

Here's the deal. I'm flying to Boston next month. While there are a bunch of other airlines that offer direct flights to Boston and have a much shorter actual 'trip time', I bought a ticket on jetBlue. You see, I used to fiy to NY all the time on jetBlue where their hub is and flying on jetBlue feels something like the home team.

I just got off of the phone with jetBlue customer service. It was an example of complete mistrust and obfuscation which surprised me more than a little. You see, I loved jetBlue...

But I'm not loving jetBlue right now.

You see, when I booked my flight last night I used their online system (good) and made a mistake in booking the date for my return (bad). I'm going to Boston for the weekend and accidently booked by return flight a month later in August instead of the 4 days I was looking for.

Of course their site has a lot of bookings and almost no one makes an error like this. But any UI designer who looks at their site could see that it's absolutly possible since the length of the trip is never revealed except for the flight dates. (I"m arguing that they could put in a little fading header that tells you how long your trip is for.) If' I'd see anywhere that my trip was scheduled for 35 days I'd have immediately know there was an issue. (I could make a simple change to the jetBlue UI that would solve this problem for everyone within a day.)

Today when I looked at my emailed itinerary I immediately spotted the problem and went online to change my ticket. They have a $100 change fee which I paid thinking I'd give them a call and that surely they'd waive that. After all, it wasn't a change I was asking for, it was the ticket I wanted in the first place. It was less than 24 hours and the flight wasn't for a month.

But no.

In speaking to the customer service rep who 'called' a manager. I was informed that I had only a 4 hour window to make any changes and that after that, there was nothing anyone could do. You see, no one at jetBlue customer service has the 'authority' to refuse this fee. It was company policy that they couldn't actually do anything.

What kind of a company has a customer service department that can't service customers?

I was instructed that my 'only recourse' was to submit feedback on their web site. That's it. Evidently they wouldn't even be entering it as a note. I couldn't even talk to the manager. I was just informed what she supposedly said.

Look, I run customer service for Sendside and deal with customers all of the time. I know unreasonable when I hear it. But asking for a change fee to be waived when it's obvious you made a mistake is not unreasonable.

Evidently jetBlue doesn't trust their own employees enough to make any decisions, at least until you get somewhere past the 'Manager' level. That's sad, and indicative of a company that doesn't really value customer service. Customer service should allow the people in the trenches making decisions. jetBlue just became another airline in my view.

I'll cease to sing the jetBlue song. I won't book with them if there's a shorter trip. And I won't give them any preference at all when having all of our corporate travel booked.

So jetBlue will make an additional $100 from me, but they're losing so much more.

Boom Startup's First 10

Boom Startup's chosen the first 10 statups to include in their mentoring program.

It's not Techstars yet for sure... a number of these guys don't have websites yet so you know it's pretty early.

Orem, Utah – May 10, 2010 – BoomStartup, a seed capital and mentor-focused investment program for web and software start-ups, today announced it has selected 10 companies to participate in its inaugural three-month program. The companies in the Class of 2010 include 3PointData, Bazari, Case Rover, Fashion Genome Project, IActionable, Khumbu, MashWorx, No Ink Publishing, O-Codes, and Voycit.

Each selected company will receive up to $15,000 in seed capital, free office resources, professional services and mentoring from a group of seasoned and successful entrepreneurs. Companies will be paired with one of the investor-mentors, who will guide each start-up and connect them with people in their networks to help them get their businesses off on the right foot.

“Utah has a proven track record of creating and supporting great technology companies, and we’re confident that these 10 start-ups will be among the growing list of innovative companies to come out of our state,” said Robb Kunz, co-founder and co-Managing Partner of BoomStartup. “These companies have great ideas and technologies that will push their individual markets to new heights due to their innovation and the mentoring that they will receive from our group of successful investor-mentors.”

The selected companies are as follows:

3PointData solves the decision maker’s data problem by creating real-time data streams to make better decisions, better products, and more money. 3PointData delivers weather, stock, geo IP, zip code, sales tax, traffic, and much more, right to a spreadsheet, database or custom application.

Bazari is a text message-based platform that provides the benefits of ecommerce to markets without internet access. Through the platform, customers can browse for products, purchase the specified product, make the payment, and have the product delivered similar to shopping on eBay or Amazon.

Case Rover is a software-as-a service (SaaS) platform targeted at the multi-billion dollar U.S. litigation support and compliance markets.

The Fashion Genome Project is the next big thing in online clothes shopping, utilizing revolutionary technology to eliminate the pain points and unpredictable results that usually come in the process.

IActionable is a SaaS-based application that helps sites and services attract new users, retain existing users, and increase desirable actions by providing customizable achievement and points systems. IActionable enables any site to define and automatically award public badges and points to their users when specific actions are performed.

Khumbu is helping consumers simplify their wallet while creating affinity programs for vendors, by offering virtual loyalty cards for mobile devices. Khumbu weaves affinity tracking with social media. Khumbu’s clearinghouse allows consumers to trade, redeem, and consolidate partially used loyalty cards, while also providing intuitive offers and promotions for related vendors.

MashWorx creates permission-based applications designed to help companies better serve their customers beyond the limits of a single site. MashWorx’s apps, or mashups, enable people to choose their own web experience.

No Ink Publishing provides an online authoring system for do-it-yourself mobile publishing, with an initial focus on interactive, animated children’s books for the Apple iPad.

O-Codes creates small text codes that appear in offline media (magazines, newspapers, brochures, billboards, TV, movie trailers, coupons, catalogs, business cards, etc). Consumers can “bookmark” the offline content they like, share that content (to Facebook, Twitter, and Evernote), and even make purchases using simple text messages, and without using a computer.

Voycit is a political, social website where citizens can come to get informed on political issues, current events, legislation, voting histories, and candidate platforms, get involved by voting on current legislation, completing polls and organizing for action, and hold elected officials accountable. In turn, Lawmakers can engage with their constituents, get real feedback on legislation and clarify positions and voting.

All companies will be headquartered at the Canyon Park Technology Center, Building J (1401 N. Research Way, Orem, Utah). In addition to providing companies with seed capital and free resources, the companies will complete an education curriculum designed to teach each entrepreneur the fundamentals that will help them become successful as they grow their companies.

The three-month program will conclude with an Investor Day in September hosted by BoomStartup that allows interested investors to meet with each company.



4 Years. Go.

This Land

This video was shot by my good friend Chia, a headshot photographer in  NYC.

Paul Allen: CEOs Who Code

I was reading tonight a Paul Allen post about CEO's who code.

I tried to leave a comment but I think I was unsuccessful. At least I didn't get the 'moderation' confirmation that's common on Wordpress blogs.

Paul's post was dead-on with this.

There’s an amazing feeling of satisfaction when you build something that works – and better yet, something that is used by thousands of people.

Now, I'm not a coder by any means. In fact, any mention of coding by those are not immersed in C+ or Java or Ruby on Rails or whatever is probably too much.

For myself, I've had to learn a little CSS, HTML, SEO and enough of other stuff that I can often cut and paste real code to get things to work the way I need them to.

The first 'application' that I created was cobbled together from some off the shelf shopping cart software and, what was then, newly discovered RSS feeds... but it worked. (Way before Groupon I might add.)

As soon as you have the title of CEO (and it's a real company) it's irresponsible to be coding. A CEO is responsible for the direction fo the entire organization, and that requires that a CEO's head be above the trench line and not down in the Java.

That being said, CEO's who understand how code is developed, structured and what's possible are a huge asset to a technology company. Before you can create something new you must understand what's possible and the shortest, most efficient way to get there.

Through Channel Sales Managment SaaS

A video oveview of Senside's sales channel communication management SaaS offering.

Sendside's a perfect solution for companies that sell through the channel with VARs, resellers and channel partners. They now have visibility not only into their channel partners, but through their partners to the end buyer with real time reporting and analytics that offer awesome new insights into exactly what content is being opened, read, and what messages are resulting in sales.

And it doesn't stop there. Towards the end of the video you'll see that there are a host of other capabilites around content dissemination and control that give sales channel companies control they never dreamed of.

Swagapalooza

Companies are catching on to the fact that bloggers can provide an effective way to create buzz about their brands. We've seen several efforts that explicitly recognise that fact, such as TasteCasting for restaurants and YokmoK's free travel giveaways. Bringing the notion into the world of new consumer products is Swagapalooza, an invitation-only event that gives influential bloggers free samples of new products.

Created by Bay Area startup Launch Hear, Swagapalooza aims to give entrepreneurs a way to get their producs in front of the most-followed bloggers and tweeters from across the United States. The first event was held in New York in September last year. At it, brands including Surprise Industries, Idea Paint and Switch2Health—which, coincidentally, we just covered—had the chance to make presentations to the select audience of 100 bloggers, 20 Twitterers and 5 Redditors. In exchange for their participation, the audience members were entitled to free samples of any of the products being presented. A detailed review of the event is available on AdAge.

Swagapalooza's next event will occur in March in San Francisco, and Launch Hear is currently seeking both bloggers and companies with new products to show off. One to try out in your next promotional campaign? Or how about launching something similar elsewhere? (Related: Blogger helps connect consumers and brands — Food blogger turned intermediary & purveyor.)

Website: www.swagapalooza.com
Contact: alex@swagapalooza.com

from Springwise